In motor vehicles, safety seats have been used to maintain the seated posture of small children during travel and protect them from injuries at times of collision and from shocks at times of acceleration and deceleration. Current safety regulations make it mandatory that infants and small children are restrained while in an operating motor vehicle. In many states, such regulations mandate the use of child safety seats for children up to the age of four years. Modern child safety seats are typically removable structures which are positioned on permanent automotive seats during operation of a vehicle.
There have been known various seats forming a permanent part of a vehicle having a built-in heating device adapted to warm bodies of occupants. Such heated seats are known to be particularly common in European-built cars in which both the driver and passenger seats are provided with electrical heating elements. Several different types of heating elements and methods of attachment thereof to stationary car seats are known in the automobile industry.
Known heated seats are substantially stationary with respect to a body of automobile and form its inseparable part. However, there is a known need for removable heated child safety seats capable of providing rapid heating of seating area and having heating arrangements independent from that of the stationary car seats. The demand for such heated child safety seats is quite acute especially during cold seasons and/or in geographical locations having severe climate conditions. There is a specific need for autonomous heated child safety seats having heating elements distributed along its entire seating area, so that a child placed in such seat can be expeditiously heated. It is not uncommon for a child to be restrained within the child safety seat inside the car when engine and automobile heating systems are not operational. Furthermore, a child can be carried outside of the vehicle within such safety seat. All these make it important to provide child safety seats with a heating system independent from that of an automobile, so as to expeditiously warm a child's body.